Police: Fentanyl Killing Teens May Have Come From One Home

Authorities say adults in home distributed pills to teens who sold them to other teens
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 7, 2023 2:15 AM CST
Updated Feb 7, 2023 3:48 AM CST
3 Dallas-Area Teens Dead in Fentanyl Overdoses Linked to One Home
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / Darwin Brandis)

Police say 10 students ages 13 to 17 have overdosed on fentanyl, three of them fatally, since September in the Carrollton area near Dallas, Texas—and the pills in question may all have come from one house. The students involved attend or attended RL Turner High School, Dewitt Perry Middle School, and Dan F. Long Middle School, all in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district, and the home involved is just blocks away from the high school and one of the middle schools, NBC News reports. Luis Navarrete, 21, and Magaly Mejia Cano, 29, who live in the home, have been charged with conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance, the Dallas News reports.

"On multiple occasions, law enforcement members have observed Navarrete and Mejia Cano conduct hand-to-hand transactions with multiple individuals who sometimes arrive on foot and in vehicles," most of them juveniles, a court document states. Eight students between the ages of 14 and 16 are accused of dealing drugs they got from Navarrete and Mejia Cano. Two of the students who survived their ODs told police they'd taken M30 pills (fake Percocet and Oxycontin pills laced with fentanyl) they got from Navarrete and Mejia Cano before overdosing. "Selling drugs alone is a serious transgression, but to sell deadly fentanyl to a juvenile is one of the most shocking and callous ways to hurt a community," a DEA agent says in a Department of Justice statement. (More fentanyl stories.)

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